


It All Crystalized

by Velocity_Owl87



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Childbirth, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Introspection, Mutual Pining, Older Woman/Younger Man, One Night Stands, Past Relationship(s), Retirement, Second Chances, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-03
Updated: 2015-11-03
Packaged: 2018-04-29 17:27:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5136374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Velocity_Owl87/pseuds/Velocity_Owl87
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dani's had a good career and has decided it's time to retire and where else to do it by in Philly, where she had the best successes and the happiest times of her life. Even if she's had a few regrets, it was a good run and a good ceremony.</p><p>And a mindblowing night with Claude, whom she may or may not have a mutual pining situation going on with. </p><p>A curveball in the shape of a child gets her and Claude sharing a much closer space than they had been used to and they both have to decide if it's worth stepping up to the plate, or keeping silent and missing out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It All Crystalized

**Author's Note:**

> I honestly wasn't even going to write this, but I got a bit maudlin over Danny's retirement (I swear all my favourites have retired this year. Stevie Gerrard, Sheldon Souray, Josey Theodore and now, Danny B. If Iker Casillas retires, I'm done for) and was inspired by "Ice Ice Baby" by Uraneia. 
> 
> Considering that Danny is such a family man, despite the hardships, I got intrigued about the possibility of a later life baby with Claude and how it would spark all the unspoken bits and pieces of the past between them and voila! I also have wanted to write a Girl!Danny ever since she made a cameo in one of my earlier genderswaps "You Have To Be Sure From The Very Start, Lest Your World Fall Apart" where she and Josey are some of the few female pioneers of the NHL and Manon Rheaume is an icon for opening the doors for them. 
> 
> Proofed and if there are mistakes, I apologize and they will be edited later.

She opened a bleary eye and shut it immediately when the watery light of the dawn hit it. She waited for a few seconds to get her bearings before she tried again. Counting to twenty, she tried again and was surprised to see not her bedroom, but the nondescript decoration of a hotel room. Pale cream walls and watery landscape paintings met her gaze.

She shifted in the bed and nearly screamed when an arm tightened itself around her waist. Oh. She wasn't alone in bed. Moving her head carefully, she bit down the swear words that were on the tip of her tongue when she caught sight of the bright mop of ginger curls belonging to one man. Oh. Oh Shit.

Dani let her aching head fall back onto the pillow as she tried to recall exactly what had happened the night after her retirement ceremony.

Bits and pieces came back to her: The ceremony, her achievements being flashes on the screens, the arena full of fans cheering her name and her boys standing tall and proud beside their mother, one of the first women in the NHL once Manon Rheaume broke that last taboo. She recalled some of the game, but after that, it got fuzzy.

She guessed that she must have allowed herself to be talked out to a night in the town, Claude must have been awfully persuasive or she must have been feeling the nostalgia. Either way, she _knew_ she had maybe drunk a bit more than she had intended. She knew that Claude looking at her with that heavy-lidded way he did had a whole lot to do with the next bits and pieces.

She felt her face burn as she recalled him cupping her breast and thumbing her nipple through the thin fabric of her dress blouse and chemise. The wet-mouthed kisses and Claude whispering to her to wrap her leg around him as he fucked her against the wall of a nightclub, her dark, sedate skirt pulled up to her waist and her panties barely hanging on one leg as he did so.

They must have come here to finish off the tension that had built up between them all those years ago when they had moved in together. She knew that it was either going to fizzle out with distance and time or come to an explosive head with closeness and too much alcohol. It was inevitable, with how insane the chemistry between them was. There was just no other way that things would end up differently.

She was just surprised that it had happened so soon after she had come back to Philly.

A hot flush of shame shot up her face as the bed moved and Claude shifted up to look at her, his expression subdued and slightly wary as he waited for her reaction to the situation. His eyes were sleep-smudged and his face was softened in the morning. Close to what it had been, but not quite the same as it had been when she had invited him into her home. She blinked and the resemblance faded, leaving him with the harder features and eyes full of hard-earned experience he had gained in the years since.

“Do you have time for breakfast? Or do you need to finish your walk of shame fast to get on with your day?”

Claude blinked at her twice, her words and her reaction not what he was expecting from her. Dani had to admit that throwing him off balance felt damned good and she was smug about still being able to do so.

He finally shook himself out of it and sat up, making Dani briefly miss having his arm around her waist. But only for a bit. She couldn't let herself dwell on it. Not when it was highly unlikely that there would be a repeat of the situation again.

(Although she wouldn't mind it, if she was being honest with herself. But that was highly unlikely for numerous reasons)

“Sure. You got any place special in mind?”

Dani sat up in turn and stretched, shivering slightly when Claude ran his fingers up and down her spine.

“The usual.”

Claude smiled.

“Yeah, we can do that.”

~*~*~*~

It should have been obvious.

After three kids, she should have been an old hand at it, but in her defense, she hadn't been pregnant in a long while. Cameron's nearly fifteen! She had been on birth control for most of that time, so how could anyone blame her for missing the most obvious signs of a pregnancy?

She didn't clue in until someone at Starbuck's made an offhand comment about how big her tits were and how she had to run to the bathroom after taking a sip of her favourite coffee and puking up every single thing she had eaten that day.

It had been enough for her to run to make a stop at Walgreen's and grab a couple of tests and a huge bottle of iced tea. She knew that the ice tea was a weak attempt at making it look like anything else than it really was-a woman trying to figure out if she'd fucked up or not. But she didn't care. She did want that iced tea.

She drank the iced tea and did the tests, all three of them and paced around the bathroom and gave thanks that the boys were with their father that week. It was going to be tough to explain to them that surprise, they were going to have another addition to the family despite her swearing vehemently that there was no chance in hell it was ever going to happen.

She loved her sons and even though the years had been hard on both them and her career, the idea of having another child had never crossed her mind. Even with the men she had dated, that had not been on the table. She was done having babies and toddlers underfoot. Her children would be leaving the nest in a few years and she was quite okay with that. Yes, it would be odd to not wake up to the chaos that having them around meant, but she had accepted that the time would come.

And now...

She laughed, a slight hysterical edge to her laughter when she saw the variations of the same answer on the two tests she had grabbed: a pink plus sign and two lines.

Her legs gave way and she collapsed on the closed toilet lid.

She was going to be a mother for the fourth time and Claude was the father.

It was this knowledge that pushed any other thoughts out of her mind. She was having Claude’s baby.

The boys were going to lose their collective minds.

~*~*~*~*~

Claude is more surprised than he wanted to admit when he was summoned by Dani to a coffee shop outside of the vicinity of the front office and Haddonfield.

Other than business and small talk here and there, he hadn't had much contact with Dani. He couldn't blame her. Although he had convinced himself that things were like they should be after finding themselves in bed after a spectacular night of partying after her retirement, he wished that there was a bit more than the strained distance they had between them. He knew that he could maybe do something to ease it on his end, but something had always stopped him from taking that last step: Her kids, maybe the guy she had been seeing, maybe the girl he had been seeing, maybe the distance. There was always something and in the end, Claude had let things stand.

But he knew, as he entered the shop and saw her sitting there, cradling a large mug of tea,that things were going to change yet again between them. She hadn't looked so worried or on edge ever since the divorce with Serge had gone through and Claude had a sinking feeling that one night stand had something to do with it.

His suspicions were proven correct when he saw the label of the tea bag in her mug. Chamomile. Dani wouldn't give up her beloved caffeine on a whim. In fact, most women he knew, including his current girlfriend, would murder someone before they gave up caffeine. Unless...

He looked closer. Dani's hair was longer than the last time he had seen her and thicker, reaching down past her shoulders now, rather than the longish bob she usually kept it in. Her blouse was also a bit tight across the boobs and she had a plate of dry toast at her elbow. He breathed in sharply when he added all of the signs together, inelegantly slumping down into the chair and getting her full notice when he did.

Dani noticed the stricken look on his face and shrugged slightly apologetically at him before she spoke.

“This wasn't how I was planning to let you know about it, to be honest.”

Claude nodded and scrubbed his face with his hands as he tried to keep his calm and not lose it.

“How? I mean...I thought you were on birth control and stuff.”

Dani turned pink at that and took a sip of her tea.

“I had a throat infection and finished the course of antibiotics that day. I didn't think I was going to be getting laid, or I would have had back up contraceptives.”

Dani explained, her blush getting deeper as she explained what her doctor had told her after she had gotten over the shock that some antibiotics made birth control ineffective. Claude, to his credit, had nodded and had looked less stricken than he had when he had realized that holy shit, he was going to have a kid with Dani B! The woman he had more or less lusted after for so many freaking years until they had finally thrown caution to the wind and ended-

“What are you thinking of doing?”

Dani's face blanched and she swallowed hard, her hands tightening around her mug.

“I hadn't made up my mind yet. Not until I talked to you, at least.”

She bit her bottom lip before continuing.

“I know that it's not ideal, what with the age difference between the boys and this one. I'm starting a new job and-”

She stopped and looked at him.

“I don't even know if you want to be a dad so soon. I know that-”

Claude abruptly grabbed her hands, startling her into silence and letting him speak.

“Dani...I want to be a dad. I want to have a kid with you. Even if it's a bit weird how it's come about and how it's probably a shit time to do it, I want to have a kid with you. But I also don't want to pressure you into a decision. Whatever choice you make, I've got your back.”

She studied his face for any sign that he wasn't serious, but she gets none.

He's deadly serious.

He wants this baby as much as she does.

“Good. So keep that in mind when we tell the boys.”

~*~*~*~*~

The boys, oddly enough, were easy to tell.

Although Cameron looked vaguely disgusted at the thought of his mother having sex, Caelan and Carson’s nonplussed reactions balanced it all out. Although she did pretend to ignore the quietly murmured warnings that Caelan and Carson deemed necessary to give Claude. Although it was touching, it was a bit much for them to be threatening to Claude, who despite everything, was mostly harmless.

She did step in when Claude started blanching a bit and shooed them off to go to practice and leave her and Claude alone.

“Remind to not get on Caelan’s bad side. Ever.”

Dani gave him a wry smile as they entered the kitchen and she handed him a bottle of iced tea and grabbed one for herself and cracked it.

“He does have a vindictive streak. No idea where he got it from. Must be Serge.”

Claude gave her glare before he did the same with his iced tea and drank a quarter of it down.

“You know damned well where he got it from and even though I can’t appreciate it, I can understand it.”

He took a long swallow before looking at Dani, who had just put down her bottle and was looking at him with a mixture of apprehension and curiosity.

“You’re vulnerable and I know that if my mom was in the same position, I’d feel the same way.”

Dani raised an eyebrow at that.

“How am I vulnerable?”

Claude didn’t reply and only gave her a wry look before dumping the empty bottle in the recycling.

“Don’t make me say it. Not until everything is sure.”

Dani blinked and before she could say anything else, she was left alone in the kitchen and mulling over Claude’s word with no actual answers.

~*~*~*~*

Claude never elaborated what he meant that day, nor did he ever let himself be alone with Dani the rest of the pregnancy. Dani was amused, yet slightly hurt at how he managed to do it. He had refused to move in again, but had helped in making the nursery and taking up some of the duties as he had before. They spoke, they weren’t cold or screaming at each other as she and Serge had when the fissures in the marriage had started to appear. But it was nothing deep that could wreck the equilibrium that they had built up once the news of the baby was out.

Dani was slightly hurt, but she understood his caution. They couldn’t afford to get too close. Not when they didn’t know if that was what they truly wanted or if they were simply growing closer because of the baby. She couldn’t go through another relationship were the child was the only thing holding them together.

Not with anyone and definitely not Claude.

And Claude wouldn’t leave his girlfriend and Dani tried to not be irrationally angry about the situation. Claude’s girlfriend was as much a victim as the child who had grown quite large and was keeping her up at night, impatient to be born. A child that they had decided to not find out the gender of until it was born. She hadn’t known with the boys and she wanted to continue the tradition, despite being sure that this one was a girl.

She couldn’t voice it, but she just _knew_ that this one was a girl and she was already thinking of naming her after her own _maman._ She was sure that Claude wouldn’t mind. He had indicated as much. So she had only come up with Constance and hadn’t thought of any other names.

The baby’s movements dragged her out of her thoughts and she stood up from the rocking chair that Claude had thoughtfully put in the corner of the nursery with a mumbled explanation before he had literally ran away, stating he was late for an appointment. She wanted to be angry and instead, she had sat down and cried until the baby had forced her to walk off the ache in her ribs and back. She had no right to him and she felt foolish as she washed her face and pushed the loose curls out of her face.

He was the father of her child and that was all. He was her friend and they were going to raise this baby together. But that was where it all ended. They hadn’t promised anything binding to each other. Only that he would back her up in whatever choice she made.

That was all she was entitled to.

She winced, a sharp, vice-like pain radiating through her entire pelvic region. It was-Her mind went blank with it, the agony being all she could think about that entire moment. It had been hurting on and off all day, but she had been too frazzled with getting the boys out to practice and giving instructions to the office now that her leave had just started. She had been distracted until she had sat in the rocking chair and let her mind wander through the thoughts she had pushed away lest they consume her waking hours.

Now, there were no distractions and it was apparent that she had been in labour the whole day and it was time.

Panting through the pain, she managed to fish her mobile out of her pocket, glad that Caelan and Claude had insisted that she keep it close just in case.

She breathed through another contraction and called Caelan, leaving a message when it went to voicemail. She cried out and called Claude, nearly weeping in gratitude when he picked up at the first ring.

“How fast can you get here? She’s on her way.”

Claude, to his credit, picked up right away what she meant. “Give me ten minutes.”

~*~*~*~*

Claude had stepped out of the hospital and went to get some fresh air, his mind still dizzy with what just had happened in Dani's room. He was shaking, he was exhausted, but he couldn't help the triumphant smirk crossing his face.

He had everything he ever wanted and he didn't give a damn what he looked like.

His life was complete, despite it not looking like it five hours past.

It had been five hours since he had brought Dani in. Three of those had been spent holding Dani’s hand and hoping she wasn’t going to break his hand as she laboured and two of them had been spent with him calling the boys, calling his parents, calling teammates and the front office, and staring at his daughter in wonder.

“She's perfect. Our daughter.” Dani whispered as she nursed her last baby while she ran her fingertips down the black fuzz on her skull in gentle motions, humming softly as she did.

Claude only made a thick noise in his throat. He had wanted a girl as well. A little girl with Dani's liquid dark eyes and her long dark hair and her creamy skin. A miniature of Dani so that even if things didn't ever coalesce, she would be there to smile at him and ease the ache of never really being with Dani like he wanted and needed to.

He had been lying to himself all those months, that they could keep it focused solely on their daughter.

He knew, when he had told his girlfriend that he was moving out a month before their daughter was born that Dani was it. She was the one and no one would ever replace her in his heart.

They had been idiots, walking away from each other before and they had been given a second chance. Their daughter was proof of that. He had to try. Even if just to know...

“I'm glad she's just like you. I am a lucky man to have you and her by my side.”

Claude replied, his own voice going thick and raspy as he spoke.

Dani raised her head and looked at him, her gaze mellow and heavy-lidded as she did, her face calm as always. But he knew that she wasn't as calm as she looked. He could see the muscle at the corner of her eye twitch and the beating of her pulse in the hollow of her throat.

“Don't say anything that you don't mean, Claude.”

Claude shook his head and laughed bitterly.

“I'm just saying what I should have said years ago. What I should have seen years ago, rather than being a stupid kid and walking away from all that we had. All that was good with us.”

Dani's colour heightened in her cheekbones and she drew in a ragged breath. Her eyes went darker and brighter and she had tears shining like diamonds on her lower lashes and Claude wanted to kick himself. He knew that other men had said that to her before and they had all broken their promises to her.

“Don't-Don't-”

He cut her off, since he knew that if he didn't say anything right away, he was going to lose this one fucking chance and he was going to be fucked if he lost her due to his stupidity _again._ So he talked and talked fast and hoped that she would listen to him and take the chance.

“I'm not promising what I can't and won't give. I'm done with that. Our daughter and all we've gone through since you told me about her is proof of what I am saying. Even though I had to take so long to see it.”

Dani let out a choked sob at his words and Claude just leaned in closer before kissing the corner of her mouth.

“I'm not walking away this time, Danielle Jeanne-Claudette Briere. I'm not.”

Dani's eyes closed and she kissed him back, full mouthed and full of passion and Claude couldn't help a choked sob of relief that she swallowed up in her kiss.

END

 


End file.
